Banksy pens op-ed, New York Times rejects it

Banksy wrote on his website that the New York Times declined to publish his op-ed.

Banksy wrote that the New York Times declined to publish his op-ed about One World Trade Center.Credit: Banksy

Banksy posted an op-ed on his website after the New York Times declined to publish it.

Banksy implied that the newspaper was censoring him, posting photos of his recent graffitied message in Greenpoint, "This site contains blocked messages." He then wrote, "Today's piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times. But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this ... "

He posted an image of how he imagined his op-ed to look in the paper, complete with the New York Times nameplate and an imagined headline and subhead: Banksy called the piece "Shyscraper."

The artist took the new World Trade Center to task in his op-ed, writing, "That building is a disaster. Well no, disasters are interesting. One World Trade Center is a non-event. It's vanilla. It looks like something they would build in Canada."

Banksy explained in his piece that he was coming from the place of a visitor and a friend to New York. "Nobody comes to New York to bathe in your well-mannered common sense," he wrote. "We're here for the spirit and audacity. Of which One World Trade has none."

Eileen Murphy, spokeswoman for the New York Times, told Metro, "He did submit an op-ed and art. We couldn't agree on either the piece or the art, so we rejected it."

Murphy added, "What he has posted on his site is not exactly the same as what he submitted."